"Show HN: Buy Amazon gift cards with Bitcoins" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5358580

Advice: change name in domain.

Result: "AmazonBitcoins shut down by Amazon" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5404232

Soooo yeah, companies have things called "trademarks" and "copyrights"... you can't just go putting another company's name inside your company's name, and then make your imagery the same as theirs, without their lawyers sending you a strongly worded C&D. However I don't see why this would have to shut down based on that -- why not restart under a new, distinct name and branding?

Though you don't seem to be using Vine imagery... why wait for the inevitable?

I'll wait, I'm not gonna shut down with a strongly worded C&D. And besides, I don't believe Vine is aware of VineClient at the moment, this is being blown way out of proportion.

So you're gambling your project on the ridiculous assumption that nobody at Vine reads Hacker News? Good luck with that.

I've never said that. I'm not gambling anything. I'm just saying that a C&D letter doesn't scare me. Y'all should read Vine's Terms of Service. I did.

>I'm just saying that a C&D letter doesn't scare me.

Most hosting companies won't share your bravado.

>Y'all should read Vine's Terms of Service. I did.

>All right, title, and interest in and to the Services (excluding Content provided by users) are and will remain the exclusive property of Vine and its licensors. The Services are protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws of both the United States and foreign countries. Vine reserves all rights not expressly granted in these Terms.

Hm.

So move your hosting outside of US reach. Find an Icelandic hosting company. I'm sure the .is domain is available as well.

I don't use shared web hosting. Thankfully.

I wish you luck, I just don't understand why you wouldn't make a fun place on the Vine service/name, and avoid using the name itself :)

It doesn't seem to have been a problem for http://vine-videos.com

They're ranking 2nd on Google for the term 'vine', and even have the Vine logo as their favicon and next to their listing!

Exactly, people here need to take a chill pill. There's no money in play here. Twitter / Vine have other fish to fry.

I bought VineFeed.com and VinePlayer.com awhile ago. The ToS (at least when I read it) said not to use the Vine name in domain names, so I put that on the backburner. I had wanted to make a couple of sites similar to Vine-videos.com though. I could see Vine bullying people in the future who use it in their name, even after being able to know a site is using it from referral / API data - and allow a site to grow large and then hit them with a "give this to us or we'll sue." If anyone wanted to partner and use the domains though I'd be up for it.

or an acquisition :-)

I agree! I highly doubt they would acquire VineClient, however the whole C&D thing is a bit far fetched. They have no grounds to send a C&D, those are all public endpoints that I'm using. If they wanted their content to be so secure, then perhaps they should have went a more secure way other than using HTTP as protocol of communication. But no, usually people take the easy route and that's why people like me are able to create things like VineClient.

The GP is suggesting you'll get a C&D for the use of the word Vine, not the use of what might be private APIs. This is where people get crafty (Instagram > Statigram). No good synonyms [1], and the name is so short that you easily leap from Wine to ShortVidClips - too near to too far.

http://thesaurus.com/browse/vine

The word "Vine" is in the dictionary, it does not solely serve the name of the Vine application. Also, none of the copyrighted logos / trademarks are used on the site. I'm not worried.

Being in the dictionary or not doesn't matter. Trademarks like "Apple" are often dictionary words.

Have you read about the guy who accessed publicly accessible URLs and was convicted under the computer fraud act?

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/07/dont-hate-the-crime-hat...

The point being that although security through obscurity is recognized as a terrible way to secure anything, it's still a basis for the CFAA.

I don't think the Vine people are such terrible people, but please realize they have you by the balls if they so please.

Academic in this instance. It would be an absolute disaster for Vine to assert or cooperate with a Weev-esque prosecution for something of this nature.

Haha you got that right!

I'm not worried. Thanks for the heads up. The software is produced under a company anyway, not me personally. I'll be waiting for a C&D.

You clearly have no concept of how trademarks work or even what they are, and your callous attitude toward them is not only going to get you into legal trouble, but is incredibly antagonistic and off-putting. I'm not sure what you were expecting to get out of making this and posting it on HN, but you will find that your attitude has done nothing but garner you a lot of ill will in a community that you were clearly trying to impress (and have failed spectacularly at doing so).

I'm sorry for coming off that way. I just hate the fact that all you guys are coming off extremely negative and then wondering why I'm not responding the way you want me to. I've dealt with a thing or two in my career my friend. I'm not trying to impress the HN community by any means, I was simply posting a link to something I made. I don't live for HN, and this is clearly not a startup along the lines of HN. All you guys need to relax. It's all water under the bridge to me. If I get a C&D letter, I'll deal with it then. At the moment, the client is up and running and that's all that matters. Thanks for your input.

Sorry for coming off as a Debbie downer, I think what you made is really cool, I'm just personally frustrated with the blatant abuse of the CFAA.